Monday, June 13, 2011

Andres Carvallo Quoted in Washington Post

In the world of home building, a phrase such as “the new American dream” conjures images of flashy show houses and the latest and greatest in features and materials. In the world of engineering it conveys something else altogether, as I learned at a conference at the University of Kansas last month.

The focus of the New American Dream symposium — jointly sponsored by KU’s Transportation Research Institute, its Interdisciplinary Research Initiative in Nature and Culture, and the university’s Commons partnership — was the “smart grid” and the evolving relationship between electric utilities and residential customers.

Not so long ago, electric utilities generated and sold electricity and customers consumed it. The customers paid the same kilowatt-per-hour price for the electricity, regardless of the time of day or the time of year. The utilities had no idea what the homeowners used the power for or when they used it. Their meters measured only total consumption. For decades, the system worked well.

But as homeowners began to acquire more electronic equipment and the majority in most service areas installed central air conditioning, the utilities came to dread days when the temperature topped 100 degrees, the humidity was off the charts and everyone sought relief by cranking up the air conditioning to the max.

To meet their peak-load demand during a summer’s 100 unbearably hottest hours, the utilities bought electricity from their competitors at a premium price or ran their own peak-load generators, which are highly polluting and expensive to operate. Compared with conventional generating equipment, peak-load generators are about eight to 10 times as costly to run.

The peak-load problem could be solved if utilities had a way to encourage customers to use less electricity on the hottest days, and if the customers knew in real time what the power was costing them on the hottest days as well as during off-peak periods.

The solution has been the “smart grid,” a digital two-way communication system between utilities and customers. In 2003, installation of the first smart grid began in Austin, where the green building movement began in the early 1990s. It took Austin Energy five years to complete the project. Today, many electric utilities around the country are planning or installing a smart-grid system.

Sharing information

How does a smart grid work? In each utility’s smart grid, every household has a “smart meter” outside and a display of consumption information inside. Depending on the system, a household can follow its consumption online in real time or within a few hours, or on a digital-display dashboard. The consumption information conveyed to customers can be extensive. At a minimum, it includes the amount of electricity being consumed, its cost per kilowatt hour, and the household’s accumulating total in the billing period. The information can also include the household’s accumulating electricity expenditure for the year and the size of the household’s carbon footprint for the billing period, the year or both. Pilot studies have shown that when households can follow their electricity consumption and its cost in real time, rather than receiving a bill weeks after consumption, they tend to use 5 to 15 percent less power.

As a further inducement, some utilities offer dynamic pricing — different kilowatt-per-hour rates, depending on the time of day and time of year. When this information is provided, a household can see exactly how much it can save by altering its routines. For example, families might do laundry and other household chores at night when rates are lower, or turn up the thermostat a degree or two during hot summer afternoons, when rates are highest.

In addition to the smart meters and in-home displays, some households will have a programmable, communicating thermostat that allows the local utility to control the homeowner’s use of central air conditioning during peak-load periods. With the homeowner’s permission, the utility sends a signal to the thermostat to reduce the number of times the air-conditioning compressor cycles on during a peak-load period.

Westar, a Kansas utility serving 685,000 customers, installed the first of its planned 90,000 “watt-saver” thermostats last year. When Westar’s central generating plant sends its signal to the watt-saver, it “messages” the customer’s air-conditioning compressor to cycle on about half as many times during a peak-load period, which can be four hours. Instead of running continuously, the compressor will cycle on for 15 minutes and off for 15 minutes. When the compressor is off, the customer’s fan unit, which circulates cooled air in the house, will still be running.

During the first summer of its watts-saver program, Westar found that as long as its customers had air movement, “they didn’t notice any discomfort and only later learned that the cut-back was on,” said symposium presenter and Westar engineer Hal Jensen.

Westar’s watt-saver thermostat program does not operate on holidays and weekends.

Benefits for utilities

From the customers’ perspective, the peak-load control is the most obvious application of the smart grid, but it was not the prime motivation for developing it, said symposium presenter Andres Carvallo, who designed the nation’s first smart grid for Austin Energy.

The smart grid gives utilities control over other crucial aspects of their business. For a utility, the outside meter is like a cash register. The two-way communication allows it to collect billing information quickly, without having to deploy an army of meter readers and contend with biting dogs. The two-way communication allows utilities to pinpoint power outages quickly because the meter can send an “I am dying” signal before it stops. The method of detecting outages still used by most utilities is primitive by comparison. When the power goes out, the utility waits for unhappy customers to call in the news, and then their employees plot pins on a map of their service area. When enough pins are plotted, they know where to send their service trucks.

The smart grid also provides a much easier way for utilities to buy electricity from small producers at the “grid edge,” including homeowners with solar photovoltaic equipment on their roofs or wind turbines, Carvallo said.

A utility could also buy the electricity stored in the batteries of hybrid and electric vehicles, he said. It’s not being done, because of regulatory and business-model issues. No price has been established for “vehicle battery sourced” electricity, he said, and it’s impractical to buy small amounts of electricity from individual car owners. But in the future, as electric vehicles become more common and car-generated kilowatts are assigned a price, utilities could buy power from organizations with fleets of electric-powered vehicles, such as the U.S. Postal Service, Carvallo said.

Katherine Salant has an architecture degree from Harvard. A native Washingtonian, she grew up in Fairfax County and lives in Michigan. If you have questions or would like to suggest topics for coverage, contact her by e-mail or go to katherinesalant@gmail.com

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Andres Carvallo is an award winning engineer, speaker, author, and executive. Andres is globally recognized by the IEEE as one of the early developers of the smart grid concept and technology. Andres championed Austin Energy's industry leading smart grid program design and implementation from 2003 – 2010 and he architected the Pecan Street Project in 2009. Andres co-authored the best selling book "The Advanced Smart Grid", has received 34 industry awards since 2005, and is a popular speaker and guest lecturer. Andres is currently the EVP of Energy Solutions and Chief Strategy Officer at Proximetry. Andres has over 27 years of experience in the Energy, Telecommunications, Computer and Software industries. Andres has held since 1992 P&L responsibilities and senior executive titles while being responsible for the strategy, development, and commercialization of over 40 products at six start-ups and leading global companies like Philips Electronics, Digital Equipment, and Borland. Furthermore, Andres started his career as a product manager for Microsoft Windows in Redmond, WA.

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How to Run IT as a Business?

It all starts with my focus on the customer as the center of the lifecycle. The Lifecycle rules a discovery, planning, and maturity model process that orchestrates a framework. The framework, called RunITbiz, is made out of the 12 critical elements for Running IT as a Business. The elements are rationalized into demand and supply modules. At the core of the RunITbiz framework is a Service Oriented Architecture that leverages all legacy systems while powering new systems built on new open standards (Web Services, XML, BPEL, etc) including cutting edge Web 2.0 tools (Blogs, Wikis, AJAX, RSS, etc).

My RunITbiz Framework has two main modules. One module focuses on Managing IT Demand as a Business and the second one on Managing IT Supply as a Business. Each module has six critical elements to master. Here are the modules and critical elements:

Running IT Supply As A Business: 7. Enterprise Architecture, 8. Vendor Management, 9. Process Management, 10. Project Management, 11. Service Management, 12. Quality ManagementI wish you great success in your transformation. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reply to any post in this blog or contact me.

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Top 20 Geek Blogs

1) Lifehacker - http://www.lifehacker.com/ - Lifehackers' motto says it all: "Don't live to geek, geek to live." This blog offers timesavers of just about every stripe, from Firefox shortcuts to tips from the "Getting things done" faithful.

2) IT Toolbox Blogs - http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/ - IT Toolbox has a number of "in the trenches" IT pros who talk about technology and management issues. There are specialist blogs dealing with security, databases and project management, among other subjects. It's a versatile site.

3) Valleywag - http://valleywag.com/ - Bring in the noise, bring in the snark. Valleywag is for those who believe that the tech industry lives or dies by the scuttlebutt pinging around Silicon Valley. And it's amusing for those of us who prefer that the lotus-eaters of Northern California stick with the dishing and tongue-wagging, leaving the rest of us to get the real work done.

4) Kotaku - http://kotaku.com/ - Kotaku is the snarky, gamer uber-blog. It has everything from reviews and gossip to cheat tips. Just about anything you'll ever need, including which game to buy and how to play it.

5) Danger Room - http://blog.wired.com/defense/ - Wired's military and defense blog writes about some of the coolest and scariest military technologies -- not to mention scandals, debates and other military news. Lots of video and imagery are included.

6) Gizmodo - http://gizmodo.com/ - Gizmodo's got the scoop on all the latest toys and cool and wacky inventions -- from high-def TVs and coffee makers to booze belts and USB drives. You've got to love a site that publishes photos of a solar-powered bathing suit. Yeah, they also blog about serious technology news too.

8) Techdirt - http://www.techdirt.com/ - Techdirt is a newsy, "tell it like it is" blog that frequently features debates on the hot issues in the Internet and computer fields. Scandals are a specialty. Simplicity is its hallmark.

9) Groklaw - http://www.groklaw.net/ - Groklaw's raison d'etre is needling SCO in its long-running patent fights against IBM and Novell, but the discussion sometimes veers toward other issues that involve technology, intellectual property, and government regulations.

10) Hack a Day - http://www.hackaday.com/ - Want to learn how to add USB to a cheap Linux router? Create a snake robot? How about an XBox 360 laptop? Hack a Day has these basement projects and many more. This site is for the serious techie. At the same time, it's good for a laugh or a new hobby.

11) Engadget - http://www.engadget.com/ - As Coke is to Pepsi, so Engadget is to Gizmodo. It's all about gear, gossip, techish issues and the occasional rant. It's got great product photos, and the editors have access to pre- and early-release gadgetry. Also, some really funny home-made junk. But we prefer Gizmodo.

12) Feedster - www.feedster.com/feedpapers/Technology - Like drinking from the hose. This Web page brings together blog sites about technology, sports, celebrity gossip, food, personal experiences -- you name it. It also offers a blog search feature that allows you to input words or phrases, and it has a very cool RSS aggregator for news feeds. It also injects some great humor into technology news. An all-around great site.

13) Forever Geek - http://forevergeek.com - Forever Geek is a great site with a myriad blogs on diverse topics, from technology and general interest news to movie and game reviews. Definitely a geek paradise. If you want to learn about the upcoming Iron Man movie or read a review of Photoshop CS3, this is the place to go.

15) Smorgasbord - http://www.smorgasbord.net/ - Billed as a site for gadget- and game-loving geeks, this blog also serves up articles that cross over into the political and celebrity news of the day. The combination of entertainment value and tech news make Smorgasbord a top contender.

16) The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) - http://www.tuaw.com/ - TUAW offers collection of independent bloggers -- that is independent but not undecided or uninformed. It's a good source for Apple-related news. The only reason it didn't make the top 15 was its singular topic focus.

17) Elliot Back's blog - http://elliottback.com/wp/ - A self-professed computer scientist, Elliot posts everything from his opinions on why XML sucks, to the Titanic's passenger list and reviews of movies like 300. This site is diverse and well composed, offering great tips on topics such as increasing system performance and blocking spam.

18) Ed Foster's Gripelog - http://www.gripe2ed.com/scoop/ - There is a new crop of blogs that highlight poor customer service for consumer electronics, bad UIs and outright rip-offs, but Ed Foster has been doing it longer than anyone else. Check out these recent topics: Defective DRM, tricky warranties on plasma TVs and bad mobile phone service.

19) Gadgetell - http://www.gadgetell.com/ - This is a great site if you want to get the latest gadget and game news along with some topical opinion pieces.

20) 4sysops - http://4sysops.com/ - This is a very useful with well-written tips and how-to's for Windows admins.

About Proximetry

Proximetry develops and commercializes AirSync™, a comprehensive communications network and device management software platform for the energy industry. AirSync delivers secure, scalable, closed-loop control, and policy-based management of devices to build and manage large complex networks built upon multiple vendor platforms that incorporate a vast array of communications technologies. AirSync™ provides the essential tools for energy organizations to provision and manage mission-critical devices and networks. Founded in 2005, Proximetry is privately held, headquartered in San Diego, California, and backed by Munich Venture Partners, Aeris Capital, Investec, and Rembrandt Venture Partners. For more information, please visit www.proximetry.com

Siemens on Proximetry

"The challenge to monitor, control, and manage millions of communicating grid devices from multiple vendors continues to grow dramatically as grid modernization drives usage of a few thousand devices to tens of millions,” said Thierry Godart, president of Siemens Smart Grid Division North America. “Our partnership with Proximetry will allow utilities to better manage this vast proliferation of information and make strides in improving grid reliability.”

Itron on Proximetry

"We believe that Cisco and Proximetry’s joint work to integrate dynamic performance management across multiple network technologies is great evidence that the Connected Grid Ecosystem continues to mature positively. Our common vision of a truly open, interoperable suite of offerings that build off of each other will be a success for utilities and consumers alike. It’s not more of the same,” said Simon Pontin, Chief Technology Officer at Itron.

Cisco on Proximetry

“Cisco is pleased to be working with Proximetry and the AirSync solution, which complements the Connected Grid Field Area Network solution with enhanced RF management capabilities. As a key member of the Connected Grid ecosystem in the Cisco Developer Network, AirSync extends the visibility in the Field Area Network GridBlocks with unique performance management capabilities”, said Jennifer Lin, Sr. Director of Product Marketing from Cisco’s Connected Energy Networks BU.

Why is AirSync Better?

1) ALL other NMS/OSS products in the market use only SNMP to provide monitoring and alarms for devices, AirSync supports SNMP and it also uses a lightweight protocol (pre-CoAP) to manage devices with closed-loop control and policy-based functionality via an agent. AirSync’s pre-CoAP protocol solves the disadvantages of SNMP for the Smart Grid (i.e. too chatty, non-stop polling, and no integrated firmware management).

2) All other NMS/OSS products are focused on telecom WAN management only (i.e. routers, switches in telco domain) while AirSync can manage the WAN and its elements, it also can go deeper into the FAN, LAN, and PAN (including the AMI network). Furthermore, AirSync manages all devices hanging on those networks(e.g. electric/gas/water meters, inverters, IDEs, RTUs, Programmable Logic Controllers, premise gateways, premise routers, and sensors in general). It is important to note that All other NMS/OSS products in the market do not manage smart meters and/or any sensors on the edge of a FAN, LAN, or PAN, but AirSync does.

3) All other NMS/OSS products in the market do NOT provide any firmware management capabilities or if they do it is very limited. And they DO NOT support FANs, LANs, and PANs. And they DO NOT provide closed-loop control of any edge devices from any vendor on any network using any topology. AirSync delivers all of the above.

4) AirSync has unique features to manage ALL networks with many configurable enhancements like shaping the traffic and QoS management by having an agent on the device side unlike All other NMS/OSS products in the market which depend only on SNMP and lack such an ability.

Bottom line: All other NMS/OSS products in the market deliver only classical and limited WAN NMS/OSS capabilities. AirSync delivers all that far better and it can also support FAN/LAN/PAN/device/firmware management functions and help manage deeper into all the networks. AirSync has a well-defined NBI that can be used to interface with any NMS/OSS and provide the utility with an integrated management system with the utility's preferred GUI but with all the advantages of AirSync.

Bottom line: All other NMS/OSS products in the market deliver only classical and limited WAN NMS/OSS capabilities. AirSync delivers all that far better and it can also support FAN/LAN/PAN/device/firmware management functions and help manage deeper into all the networks. AirSync has a well-defined NBI that can be used to interface with any NMS/OSS and provide the utility with an integrated management system with the utility's preferred GUI but with all the advantages of AirSync.